---
title: A Vote for Civic Education
date: 2025-05-14T10:00:00-04:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://terp.umd.edu/a-vote-for-civic-education"
section: Articles
---
# A Vote for Civic Education

*May 14, 2025* — by [Annie Krakower](/authors/annie-krakower)


- *Photos by Riley N. Sims*

> Gift to Maryland Democracy Initiative Supports Political Engagement, Literacy

*Marsha Laufer talks to student — Marsha Laufer ’64 and her husband, Henry Laufer (below), listen to students’ experiences in the Laufer Democracy Internship Program last summer at Stamp Student Union.*

**WELL BEFORE SHE HOSTED** political fundraisers, worked on candidate campaigns or was even old enough to head to the ballot box, Marsha Laufer ’64 found her lifelong passion in an assignment from her seventh-grade civics teacher.

The task was simple: Read the party platforms and choose a side for a class debate. It encouraged Laufer to ask her parents about their politics for the first time.

“That background facilitated a conversation and growing political awareness,” she says. “And later in life, it stimulated my recognition of the significant need for and importance of civics education.”

Now, she and her husband, Henry Laufer, hope to inspire similar political interest and involvement among the next generation of voters. The couple’s $6 million gift to UMD’s [Maryland Democracy Initiative (MDI)](https://mdi.umd.edu/), announced in May, will support projects to boost civic literacy and democratic engagement in K-12 classrooms, higher ed and beyond.

“One of the goals of civics education has to be that young people leave these classes and interactions with the knowledge that their voice makes a difference,” Marsha Laufer says.

MDI, a nonpartisan program launched in 2023 with funding from a [Grand Challenges Impact Award](https://research.umd.edu/mdi), incorporates expertise from the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, College of Education, Philip Merrill College of Journalism and School of Public Policy to encourage civic participation and tackle threats to democracy.

That mission resonated with Henry and Marsha Laufer, the latter of whom left her career as a speech-language pathologist to become a full-time political activist during New York’s 2000 U.S. Senate race, when she joined Hillary Clinton’s ultimately successful campaign. She later opened the first Democratic campaign headquarters on Long Island’s North Shore and chaired her local Democratic committee for eight years.


*Marsha and Henry Laufer*




**Issue:** [Spring 2025](https://terp.umd.edu/editions/spring-2025)


**Types:** [Explorations](https://terp.umd.edu/category/explorations)